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Rebel Unity Is Scarce at the Darfur Talks in Libya

A Darfur rebel took in the buffet lunch at his hotel in Sirte, Libya. Many rebel leaders did not show up for talks called in an effort to end the bloody conflict in Sudan. Credit
Jehad Nga for The New York Times

SIRTE, Libya, Oct. 30 — Muhammad Ibrahim Asirek, a Darfurian rebel commander, slogged three days from western Sudan through the Sahara and then hitched a ride on the back of a truck to get to the peace talks being held here. As soon as he arrived, he was hit with questions about all the rebel leaders who had not shown up.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “We’re here. We’re from Darfur. And we have guns, too.”

It’s not easy being a Darfurian rebel, especially if you’re a member of the B team. Instead of being praised for coming here in the interests of peace, as the world begged them to do, they have been gaped at, criticized for being ineffective and dogged by questions about where the big guys are, like Abdel Wahid el-Nur, a founding father of Darfur’s rebellion, and Khalil Ibrahim, the commander of one of the strongest rebel armies, both of whom are boycotting the talks.

But the reality that international negotiators are beginning to grudgingly accept is that the rebels here in Sirte, Libya’s government center, represent the facts on the ground. After years of fragmentation and isolation, Darfur’s resistance movements have broken down into a fractious bunch of men, many of whom have never met before, who hail from different corners of the land and who belong to different tribes and command their own little armies.

“That’s the problem with Darfur,” said Umberto Tavolato, an adviser for the European Union at the talks. “There is no emerging leader.”

Darfur’s rebels have been fighting for the last four years against the Sudanese government, which they say has neglected Darfurians. The insurgency and brutal counterinsurgency have claimed more than 200,000 lives, and the United Nations and world powers organized this conference to bring all the parties together — the rebels, the government, tribal elders and peacekeeping experts — in the hope of hammering out a truce.

But the negotiations have stalled from the start because of suspicion and no-shows, and it seems that if any peace will be made, it is not coming for weeks. The plan now, United Nations officials announced here on Tuesday, is to send diplomats back to Darfur to get more rebels. But it is not clear how much difference the participation of better-known rebels will make.

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Ishmael Doud Deefala, a rebel from a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, sat in the lobby of his hotel before a round of talks.Credit
Jehad Nga for The New York Times

Take Mr. Abdel Wahid, who said he was not coming because he did not trust the Sudanese government. Mr. Abdel Wahid has been holed up in Paris for the last year. He may still be popular in the squalid displaced-persons camps across Darfur, but he does not command mass numbers of troops anymore.

Actually, because of all the factionalization, nobody does.

“There are no big leaders anymore,” said Ibrahim Y. M. Abdalla, deputy chairman of a splinter faction of the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the larger and more divided rebel outfits. “Maybe there are some people who look big because we used to be united and they used to be our leaders. But we left them. They are not big anymore.”

When the rebellion started in 2003, there were just two main groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, which was supported by Sudanese Islamists who used to be friends with Osama bin Laden, and the Sudan Liberation Army. But since then, tribal disputes, geographical realities — Darfur is about as big as France — and the lust for power have spawned a proliferation of rebel armies. By the United Nations’ latest count, there were 28.

Seven are represented here. And even getting them on the same page has been a Darfur-size struggle.

On the first day of the conference, Hashim Hamad, a bookish political adviser for a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, called a meeting at his hotel for the rebels to write a joint statement. They hunched over a laptop for hours, slaving over the words. But when it came time to deliver the statement in front of dignitaries and the world news media, the rebel appointed to read the statement scrapped it at the podium and gave his own off-the-cuff remarks.

On the second day, the rebel delegates sent out mixed signals again, with some stressing unity with the rest of Sudan and others threatening to split off and create the Republic of Darfur. On the third and fourth day, they differed about how long to linger in Sirte.

“Obviously, there’s no John Garang in Darfur,” said Andrew Natsios, the Bush administration’s special envoy for Sudan, referring to the leader of a separate rebellion in southern Sudan who united the various factions there and forced the government to sign a peace treaty in 2005. “There’s nobody who can speak for all the movements, and that means the negotiations will be more complicated.”

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This is meaningless, said one adviser, Hashim Hamad, left.Credit
Jehad Nga for The New York Times

One reason it has been so hard for the rebels to agree on anything is that many of the movements have split along ethnic lines. Mr. Ibrahim said some rebel leaders ran their organizations like “a family business,” handing out prized posts to members of their tribe or clan.

For the most part, the 20 or so rebels here have been sticking together, spending time in their hotel rooms watching TV and hitting the buffets as a team, stacking their plates with chicken, spaghetti and cookies. Two rebels who arrived in camouflage fatigues and turbans ended up buying matching Nike track suits.

Some of them say they feel guilty about living this well.

“My mother and father have no food,” said Mr. Hashim, who comes from a small village in a violence-racked swath of South Darfur. “This is meaningless.”

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Even more frustrating, several rebels said, was the fact that nothing they have said or done has gotten the applause or headlines that the Sudanese government scored when it announced on Saturday a unilateral cease-fire in Darfur. The Sudanese government, United Nations officials say, has an abysmal track record when it comes to cease-fires.

And even now, as the Sudanese delegation works the conference halls, drinking thimble-size glasses of tea with Western diplomats and speaking the language of peace, Sudanese troops are clearing displaced-persons camps in Darfur and, many residents say, beating anyone who resists.

The rebels have said they are fighting against a long history of marginalization in Darfur. But even here, at their show, they feel marginalized.

“Many of us want to go home,” Mr. Hashim said.

The problem is, Mr. Hashim said, he hasn’t been home for years.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: At the Darfur Talks in Libya, Rebel Unity Is as Scarce as the Rebels Themselves. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe